NVIDIA has uploaded new portion of video tutorials, covering various aspects of APEX Destruction authoring process using PhysXLab tool.

First set of tutorials is explaining creation and usage of Fracture Maps – simple black-and-white images, that can be used to specify fracturing pattern for cut-out fracturing mode.

APEX Destruction: Fracture Maps (Part 1) – Photoshop

APEX Destruction: Fracture Maps (Part 2) with PhysXLab

Second set of tutorials is showcasing multi-FBX import feature. If multiple parts of one object are imported at once, PhysXLab will recognize them as “depth 1″ chunks – thus, it is possible to pre-fracture asset in whatever manner you need (with Voronoi fracture, for example) before using it in PhysXLab.

APEX Destruction: Multi FBX (Part 1) – Prep in 3dsMax

APEX Destruction: Multi FBX (Part 2) – with PhysXLab

Supplementary files (models, textures, etc) for APEX tutorials can be downloaded here.

Previously released tutorials:

• APEX Destruction authoring with PhysXLab (Slice Fracturing, Cut-out Fracturing)
• New tutorials provide in depth view of APEX Destruction usage in UDK (Fracture Materials, Form Extended Structures, Impact Damage)

Batman: Arkham City, sequel to award winning Arkham Asylum title and second GPU PhysX game this year, has finally hit the shelves worldwide.

Update: Batman: Arkham City – GPU PhysX Profile

As usually, we are proud to present you our PhysX review and comparison video, showcasing extra physical effects that can be found in PC version of the game.

Can't view the video ? Watch alternative variant on Vimeo

Some technical details, like difference between PhysX settings, were already revealed in our preview article, so let’s give a score to different aspects of GPU PhysX implementation and compare them to previous Batman: Arkham Asulum title:

All effects are done accurately, with diligence – you will not see jerky or buggy behaviour (within physics engine limitations, of course), art is fine, almost everything is configured correctly. However, some particle effects could be done better – for example, it is not appealing to see when glass shards are jumping all over the place like they were made out of rubber.

PhysX effects are scattered all over the game and accumulated in a places you will visit during main storyline (for example, you won’t see dynamic paper sheets on a random street).

Overall amount of extra physics content is similar to Arkham Asylum, but the components differ: you won’t see many “environmental” cloth objects, like all those banners and flags that can be teared appart with batarang, but in return APEX Clothing module is used extensively to simulate dynamic clothing on characters, including hoodies and coats on thugs, pants on russian twin-clowns, costume of Bruce Wayne, etc.

SPH smoke, steam and fog are rare in this game, but other particles (physical debris, shards, splinters, sparks) can be encountered much more frequently. All boss battles are enhanced with unique particle effects, for example.

As a good tradition, there is psychedelic level with lots of GPU Rigid Bodies. Looks gorgeous, actually, without PhysX effects this scene feels not nearly as vivid and spectacular.

GPU PhysX effects are certanly enhancing gameplay experience, giving it a little more depth, color and vibrance, either by providing  momentum to the battles through particle debris or making the environment more believable with interactive objects.

If you are not expecting from PhysX content something it is not supposed to be (game changing or gameplay affecting feature), you will be satisfied.

At the same time, GPU PhysX support is showing a little progress in this title. Particles, cloth and stuff – we have already saw it in a games before. While PhysX effects in original Batman have received the top score, today we are forced to deduct a few points (back in 2009 most of the effects were fresh and innovative, but now “more of the same” content did not impressed us that much).

As always, hardware accelerated PhysX effects are requiring a powerfull NVIDIA GPU, however this time framerate with PhysX enabled is unusally stable (without infamous issues like spontaneous slowdowns in Alice: Madness Returns or half-GPU physics in Mafia II). On our single GTX 580, framerate was holding on 50-60 fps even in extensive PhysX scenes and never dropped below 30 frames per second.

Nevertheless, we are thinking that GPU PhysX requirements are over demanding, giving the level of physical effects found in the game.

Also, additional PhysX effects are slightly more friendly to CPU calculation this time (in case if you don’t have NVIDIA GPU), you even will be able to play certain parts of the game normally, but smooth gameplay is still a dream.

Hybrid PhysX owners will be pleased to hear that new Batman is compatible with such systems.

Update: PhysX benchmarks roundup

Great game with a good level of GPU PhysX support. Once again, main reason to choose PC version over the console ones.

Continuing the good tradition of it’s predecessor, Batman: Arkham City provides built-in benchmark with GPU PhysX (and also DX11) effects, however this time sequence is significantly shorter and less diverse.

Update: GPU PhysX in Batman: Arkham City - review and comparison video

For those who is interested how it looks like, we have prepared following video which is showcasing the difference between minimum and maximum PhysX settings.

Meanwhile, full-scale comparison PhysX video is in the works and should be available next week.

Stay tuned.

First trailer, showcasing supplementary GPU PhysX content for upcoming Batman: Arkham City title in comparison to normal “console” physics layer, was revealed today.

Update: PhysX in Batman: Arkham City article at GeForce.com

Some effects, like SPH smoke, cloth banners and “dynamic” paper, are familiar for us from previous Batman game, others, like intense particle effects, are promising new experience and immersion.

Slightly delayed PC version of Batman: Arkham City is set to be released at November 18, 2011.

Alice: Madness Returns, highly anticipated sequel to original American McGee’s Alice, and first game with GPU PhysX support for this year. As always, we have prepared comparison PhysX video – for your viewing pleasure.

Update: PhysX benchmarks roundup

Update #2: Comparison PhysX screenshots available

GPU PhysX content in Alice: Madness Return can be characterized as “Particle Madness“. In a good way – this game contains probably most rich and diverse physically simulated particle effects, of all games with hardware PhysX support. From habitual and universal debris, chunks, smoke and dust (emitted either by player’s weapons or enemies) to environmental particles (dynamic leaves, ash, bubles, etc) and place-specific effects.

Physical simulation of goopy oil-like substance, that is spawned when black “Ruin” beings are damaged or killed, requires a special notice. During intence fights, up to 10 000 SPH fluid particles, which are colliding with level geometry and reacting to player’s movement, can be processed simultaneously.

In addition, two APEX modules  – APEX Destruction and APEX Clothing – are utilized for some minor effects:

Stone slabs, chessboards and rocks can be smashed to pieces thanks to APEX Destruction module.  Scenes, containing such objects are looking simply amazing, but unfortunately, you’ll face them only few times for the entire game.

APEX Clothing effects are so subtle, that we even haven’t included in the comparison video. Several pieces of simulated cloth and “dynamic” newspapers – you’ll be able to see them all in first 15 minutes of the game walkthrough.

Overall level of PhysX support can be adjusted via in-game settings:

PhysX High includes all additional GPU PhysX effects, described and showcased above.

PhysX Medium is less demanding for system resources – amount of physical particles is lowered, chunks from destructible objects are disappearing faster, SPH Fluid simulation is disabled.

PhysX Low -  basic CPU physics, similar for PC and consoles. Interesting note: physically simulated clothing and hair for Alice are not part of hardware PhysX content, and are not affected by PhysX settings (moreover, it is not even using PhysX engine for simulation).

Sum: Alice: Madness Returns is showing particularly good level of GPU PhysX support.  Definitely worth a play and, actually, PhysX effects may be the main reason to choose PC version over the console ones.

Keep an eye on GPU PhysX Profile page for comparison screenshots.

For additional details we recommend you to familiarize yourself with “Alice: Madness Returns: PhysX Graphics Comparison” article at GeForce.com

UPDATE: How to squeeze a bit of performance with GPU PhysX enabled.

Alice: Madness Returns is indeed showing top grade PhysX effects, but is also very demanding for resources – in certain scenes (for example, while you’re shooting oil-dropping “Ruins” with Pepper Grinder, that is producing a lot of physical particles itself) overall framerate may drop to 20 and lower fps, resulting in unpleasant gameplay. That is what we’ve faced with our single GTX 470, and we saw reports on low performance from people with GTX 560+ GPUs (dedicated PhysX GPUs seems to work better, however).

Hoping to obtain some performance increase,  we’ve tried different combinations of PhysX related parameters, that can be found in game’s .ini files. Unfortunately, this game is not using APEX Particles module for particle effects (90 % of all GPU PhysX content in this title are particles), but some older PhysXParticleSystem implementation – it is not affected APEX resource budget settings (which are functioning properly) and promising “ParticlePercentage” parameter, that is supposed to define global particle LOD, is simply not working (so we can not say “hey, spawn us only 1/3 of all particles” and expect 3x performance increase).

Moreover, due to game structure, we can not disable particles effects one by one (like we did in Mafia 2) – for example, volumetric smoke from Pepper Grinder, which is big resource hog.

Finally, we came up with following settings:

File:

\Documents\My Games\Alice Madness Returns\AliceGame\Config\AliceGame.ini

Set:

[Engine.WorldInfo]

MaxPhysicsSubsteps=4

To perform less physics calculations per frame (default for UE3 – 5, default for Alice – 10).

Next, File:

\Documents\My Games\Alice Madness Returns\AliceGame\Config\AliceEngine.ini

Set:

[Engine.Engine]

PhysXGpuHeapSize=128

PhysXMeshCacheSize=16

To increase amount of GPU memory, allocated by PhysX calculations (default – 64/8).

In addition, you might also want to decrease number of rigid body chunks, produced by destructible APEX objects (but they can be found only on several game levels).

[SystemSettings]

ApexDestructionMaxChunkIslandCount=50

ApexDestructionMaxChunkIslandCountHigh=150

For PhysX Medium (default – 150) and PhysX High (default – 500) settings.

To check out if our tweaks will have any practical effect, we used a scene from the beginning of “Chapter 1 – Assemblage” level – an intense fight with “Ruins” (6-7 Malicious Ruins + 1 Menacing Ruin = a lot of SPH Fluid) using only Pepper Grinder (a lot of particles and volumetric smoke).

PhysX is set to High. System: C2Q 9400, GTX 470, 4BG RAM, Win 7 x64. Measured with FRAPS.

As you may see, there is no significant difference in performance, but framerate is smoother, without large fps drops.

Two last things:

- If you are not satisfied with “PhysX High” settings, switch to “PhysX Medium” – that will disable fluid simulation and scale down particles effects.

- By default framerate in Alice is capped by 30 fps. To remove it, you need to set “bSmoothFrameRate” to “False” in “AliceEngine.ini”. But in this case your framerate may bounce from 100+ fps to 30+ fps (in intensive PhysX scenes) and back, so it will result in unresponsive and choppy controls. Thus, we will recommend to keep Smooth option enabled.

If you’ll have any ideas on more performance tweaking, let us know.

NVIDIA has has published a nice video, that is showcasing technical demo called “Glowball”, running on their next quad-core mobile chip known as “Project Kal-EL” or Tegra 3, presumably.

Glowball demo features some complex (for a mobile device) real-time dynamic lighting and shadowing effects, and decent level of PhysX based physics calculations – rigid body barrels and drapes, fully simulated as cloth obejcts.

Cloth simulation is partically interesting: scene contains 10 drapes, likely 100-150 vertices each, affected by gravity and board movement, calculated simultaneously – new kind of physics effects for mobile devices. This tech can be used not necessarily for flags or banners, but for dynamic clothing on characters, for example.

Demo was running on PhysX SDK 2.8.4.5.

Update: More physical demos on Tegra 3 platform

Mobile devices are interesting environment for PhysX SDK to evolve and adapt, so we are eager to see how things will play out in this direction.

Apolo Studios Framework Physics Integration by apolostudioschannel

PhysX SDK integration in Apolo Studios rendering engine.

Block Fuse – Playthrough by AquaGeneral

Simple physics game by our fellow reader AquaGeneral. It is using Unity engine.

Physics Silo – 100,000 PhysX Particles in UDK by joshcaulton2007

Artistic simulation with physical particles, made with UDK. According to the author, most of the demo sequence is running in real-time.

Oddity Engine Physx Tower by OddityInteractive

1000 collidable rigid bodies, powered by PhysX SDK and Oddity Engine.

Since March version of Unreal Development Kit, that has brought us NVIDIA APEX integration, users are playing with the new features trying to figure out their capabilities and limitations.

One of the most noticeable examples is this Destruction Project by the user named RU1NOUS. Even in current state it is demostrating nice a clean level design, good usage of general APEX Destruction features and interaction of APEX actors with tearable cloth objects.

Currently, APEX Destruction still requires a lot of work to make it really powerful and practical fracturing/destruction simulation tool, so let’s hope NVIDIA has all necessary additions on the roadmap.

We’ll try to keep the eye on RU1NOUS’s work and will update this post accordingly.

Unity 3D | PhysX Fun | Part 2 (Ragdoll) by NSDGames

Amusing video, made with Unity 3D and PhysX ragdolls.

XNA and PhysX Demo by jasonmitchell18

Demo of simulation features for PhysX.NET wrapper in XNA.

Physx & Jenga 2 by zgw3141995

Rigid bodies and fluids with two-way interaction (repulsion).

IET – Real Time Physics – PhysX Review by kdfcoo

PhysX demo for Interactive Entertainment Technology course offered by the School of Computer Science & Statistics in Trinity College Dublin. Showcases complex scene with rigid bodies, fluids, cloth, softbodies and forcefilelds.

NVIDIA has uploaded several tutorials videos, which provide step-by-step overview of authoring process and in-deph description of APEX Destruction module features – slice fracturing and cut-out fracturing pipelines using PhysXLab tool.

Update: New tutorials provide in depth view of APEX Destruction usage in UDK

APEX Destruction PhysXLab Tutorial: Cut-out Fracturing

APEX Destruction Tutorial: Slice Fracturing

Without doubt this tutorials will be useful for developers who want to take advantage of APEX integration with UDK, but just don’t know where to start.

PhysXLab is available for download now via Developer Support Center, the rest of the APEX tools will follow.